Radiant Joy Brilliant Love

by Clinton Callahan

  I ache. I am alone. I am afraid. Nobody would understand what is happening to me. Nobody knows what this feels like. It hurts. I am only raw nerves. I am laid open like an oyster. I am naked. I am ruined. My whole life is a lie … Everyone’s life is a lie. All of society is based on this deception. All government. All church. All school … especially school. All of it is lies, weak and pointless.

  In fact, the world is a lie. Everyone out there is still trying to keep it all together. They still believe things are seamless. They still act like they are standing on something real.

  And to see they are standing on nothing is devastating. Whatever dignity remained is blown away like a house of cards in a hurricane. Pretending to be sane and reasonable in the middle of this fraud has itself been a fraud. Only I did not know I was fraudulent. I did not know I was pretending. Either no one told me, or I was too blind to see, or both. Rage comes. Rage about being fooled. Those fuckers! Who fooled me? My parents? My teachers? Society?

  No. They are just as fooled as I am.

  Who fooled me then? No more lies! Who is the fooler?

  There can be only one answer to this question: the fooler is me. I am no victim of someone else. I am not the focus of some great conspiracy. There is no conspiracy. There is just meaninglessness. I have fooled myself for all of these years thinking that it matters if I hold it together and force it into a shape that makes sense. There is no sense. And the deception comes from me.

  But why? What do I get for this outrageous performance? Why do I do it? To get love? To get attention? To get acceptance? To avoid feeling the terror of the situation?

  Yes.

  Did it work? Did I get these things?

  Yes – but not really. Love, attention, acceptance, and clarity about the terror of the situation all came to me, but I did not get to receive them. What stole the treasure was my self-identified egoistic psychological mind. My Box. It received the benefit. I got nothing. And now the Box has accidentally forgotten and the bogus treasure is gone.

  If I keep up the show I get nothing.

  But what do I have if I stop the show?

  Also nothing.

  Either way it is nothing.

  So, then what? Do I put the show back together again? Do I continue pretending? Do I act as if I have not seen the little non-man behind the non-curtain? Do I try to go unconscious and pretend as if I do not know? Is this my only choice? What else is there?

  That is a dangerous question. Do I have the courage not to put it back together?

  Do I have the courage to stay insane?

  What would that mean?

  If I stayed the way I am now, if I stayed insane, nothing would look real. Everything would come without a name. The experience would come raw, undigested, without a story, without understanding. I could not function according to any assumptions about anything. Communication with other people would be difficult, although being in contact with them would not. But the contact I want would fry their circuits. Most people would run the other way screaming.

  If I stayed insane then every communication would be an act of creation. I could never represent anything the way it was ever represented before.

  If I stayed insane then I would know what I was intending because I would no longer be fooling myself about my intentions. But I would always know what the other person was intending too. If I stopped fooling myself it would be quite difficult for anyone else to fool me.

  If I stayed insane how could I keep from being pissed off all the time? How could I keep from hating people’s petty power manipulations, social injustices, selfishness, other people’s expectations and their murderous little fears? Now I know why crazy people yell in the street. Normalcy is so disgusting.

  If I stayed insane like this I would constantly confront true insanity, the insanity we all normally live in, what I used to think was normal. My rage about mass insanity would come when I assumed that I was someone. I would be detached if who I think I am as an identity, a person, was totally absent. Then I could understand and have compassion, but that only happens like this, when I am centered in the nothing.

  It comes to this question: Do I have the courage to remain here? Do I have the courage to never shift back, to walk out that door into the hot Greek sun and let the world stay shattered around my feet like so much rubble? Do I have the courage to be nothing and stay insane?

  Am I okay now? In this discovery, in this state that most people would call insane, am I okay? In this state that most people would run from like a man runs from a burning house, am I okay here?

  Yes.

  I am okay. And, it feels lonely here. None of life’s little rewards produce any resultant fulfillment. I cannot even talk with someone and have it mean anything real. I am just disgusted and pissed off. Everything, even touch, is false if it contains implication. Everything is empty and dead. Life tastes dry in the mouth like old mummy dust.

  On the other hand, everything is exactly as it is. I can accept whatever it is because it does not mean anything at all that it is as it is. Everything actually represents the same thing: nothing.

  If everything is nothing, then we are all the same, exactly the same. We are connected at a level below all the stories, all the expectations and conclusions. That is what is true. That is what has always been true. That is what lasts. Nothing.

  But what about this endless sadness in the center of my chest? The ache, the longing … what about that?

  Ah, let us take a closer look. There is sadness, yes. It is sad to feel the death of something that was once so near and dear to me, even if it was an illusion. Fantasy worlds die hard. If the ant-sized view is subsumed, it actually dies. Grieving its death is appropriate.

  But grief is distinct from longing. Let us not confuse grief with longing. What is the longing? This longing is the longing for communion with the Archetypal absolute.

  From where did this longing come? The longing was always there. The longing started when the universe started. Being identified with the “human” show distracted me from experiencing the longing, just like the show distracts everybody else. This in fact could be the purpose of the great deception: to distract us from experiencing the longing.

  What is the longing for? The longing is an internal ever-present compass for determining what is important, for seeing what is true, for sensing what is precious, and for choosing what is a good use of the time that we have. I am using the compass of longing now to make the effort to write these words. Some day this mapping may be useful to someone else, or to me again, when I forget.

  So, this raw insanity and this intense longing is something to come back to? Some great experience?

  Ah, a bit of humor all of a sudden?

  I wonder, what will be the excuse for the internal unconscious fantasy-generating machinery to start rolling its gears again? It has been three hours. What initiates the mental mechanism that so deftly weaves separate details back together and creates my seamless illusion of a world that I can understand and that makes sense? What makes me go back to comfortable sleep so that I think it is better to feel better?

  Ahah! Just this! This exact question is the ejection seat! Asking how it all starts again is how it all starts again! The ride is over. Back out of the Shadowlands. Amazing.

  PART V

  Countenance

  CHAPTER 14

  Reinventing People

  Imagine this experiment. You are at a party and some guy comes in thinking about himself, “I’m an idiot. I’m a jerk. I’m stupid. I’m ugly. I’m not good enough,” but everybody at the party has a different opinion. They are sincerely delighted that he has come to the party. They can’t wait to be-with him, to talk and laugh with him, to share their time with him. Is the guy a jerk, or is he a great guy?

  Do the experiment in reverse and the answer is easier to get. Imagine you are at the party and some guy comes in thinking about himself, “I’m cool. I’m the best. I’m handsome. I’m wonderful. I’m the greatest,” but
everybody at the party is about ready to throw up. “Who invited this guy?” they think, trying to avoid eye contact, hoping Mr. Cool does not come over and dominate their conversations. Here is the question again: Is the guy a jerk or is he a great guy?

  The question here is, could it be that who we really are is not what we think about ourselves but rather what is coming out of other people’s mouths to each other about us? If so, then if we want to change who we are, we need to behave in such a way that what comes out of other people’s mouths about us changes. Our feedback meter would be the effect we cause in other people’s experience.

  This consideration becomes even more interesting when we realize that we each have the power to choose what experience we have of someone else. If who they are is the experience that we have of them, and if we have the ability to choose what experience we have of them, then we have the ability to reinvent who people are. In extraordinary human relationship and in Archetypal Relationship this is an important success factor.

  This “Nine Cow Story” that follows is about how we can reinvent other people. We reinvent other people by declaring our experience of them. Goddesses are made, not found. The same is true with brilliant, happy children; with generous, kind, powerful bosses at work; with good neighbors, respectful parents, and efficient, creative, responsible employees.

  SECTION 14-A

  The Nine Cow Story

  The original “Nine Cow Story” was written by the late Patricia McGerr and published in Woman’s Day magazine in November 1965 with the title “Johnny Lingo’s Eight-Cow Wife.” A condensed version was published in February 1988 in Reader’s Digest. This story has been re-told and retold by so many people in so many different ways that I take the liberty here of telling it to you my own way.

  Mike and Bill were sailing across the ocean in search of paradise when up comes a big storm. In the middle of the night their boat crashes on a reef and is completely demolished. The two young men struggle across the reef and manage to drag themselves half-drowned up onto a tiny tropical island.

  The next morning natives of the island discover the two drenched and forlorn sailors and set about patching up their wounds, finding new clothes for them, bringing them food, and getting them comfortable.

  That evening, Mike and Bill are sitting around a fire having a meal with all the villagers. Mike keeps staring across the fire at one of the women serving the food. Finally he says to his friend, “Bill, see that woman there? She is my woman.”

  Bill says, “What? Did you drink too much salt water? Look at her! Her hair is a mess. She’s all slumped over. She’s got a big gap between her front teeth. And she’s pissed off at everybody.”

  But Mike says, “You look at her. She’s so beautiful!”

  “No, come on man!” implores Bill. “Forget it! Tomorrow we’ll get out of here. We’ll borrow an outrigger canoe and sail to a bigger island where we can catch a ride back home and you can find yourself a real woman.”

  “No way,” says Mike deliberately. “I am not leaving this place. I have found my woman. I am going to marry her and stay here the rest of my life.”

  Bill can’t believe what he’s hearing. He starts shaking his friend. “You’ve gone nuts Mike! Wake up! Wake up! What’s gotten into you?” But Mike insists that he’s staying.

  The next morning Mike has not changed his mind. The next week, still the same. Finally Bill builds himself a raft out of bamboo, makes a sail out of woven mats, and sails away, leaving Mike behind on the island.

  After Bill leaves, Mike goes to the chief of the tribe. “Hello, Chief,” he says.

  The chief just grunts. “Mmm.”

  Mike continues, “Listen, Chief, that woman – the one with the wild hair and the gap between her teeth. I’m going to marry her.”

  The chief says, “Well, in our village, if you want to marry a woman, you have to pay for her. Each woman has a different value, somewhere between one cow and nine cows. That woman you want, you can have her for three cows.”

  At this Mike gets really angry. “That is not a Three Cow Woman,” he says. “That is a Nine Cow Woman!”

  The chief starts laughing. “Her? Didn’t you notice her slumped shoulders? The way she dresses? How she’s pissed off at everybody? She isn’t even a Three Cow Woman. She’s really only worth two cows. But I said three so we had room to bargain.”

  “No!” Mike insists. “This is a Nine Cow Woman. I am going to marry her and I am going to pay nine cows for her!”

  The chief says, “You’re not only stupid, you’re crazy. I can’t do this. If I do, the whole economy of women will be destroyed.” He studies the stubborn look in Mike’s eyes for awhile and finally says, “Okay. You can do it. You can go ahead and pay nine cows for her. I will just use you as an example of a stupid American.”

  Mike says, “I don’t care what you tell people, but I’m paying nine cows for this woman.”

  He doesn’t have any money, so it takes him over a year of hard work and helping a lot of people in order to earn the nine cows. Then he and the woman get married.

  About a year after that, Bill comes sailing back to the island in his new sailboat. He tosses the anchor in the water, rows to shore, and walks into the village looking for his old buddy. When he sees a couple of natives he says, “Hi. I’m one of the guys who crashed on your island a couple of years ago. Remember me? You people took care of me and my friend Mike. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” they say. “How ya doin’?”

  Bill says, “Great! Hey, my friend Mike, is he still here? Whatever happened to him?”

  The villagers point off down the beach and say, “He lives in the house at the end of that path.”

  Bill is really excited. He runs down the path to the house and knocks on the door. In a few moments this beautiful woman opens it. “Yes?” she says.

  Bill just stares at her. Finally he says, “I’m one of the guys who crashed on the reef a couple of years ago, and I’m looking for my friend Mike. Is he here?” He figures maybe he knocked at the wrong house.

  “Yes, he’s right here,” the woman says sweetly, standing aside. “Please come in.”

  Bill walks up the steps, Mike sees him, and instantly the two buddies leap into each other’s arms for bear hugs and laughs. They sit down and start swapping stories. The woman brings them fresh mango juice. Then hot tea and a delicious abundant meal with spicy coconut-cream vegetables and fresh fish over steamed rice.

  After awhile Bill says to Mike, “Hey, I have to ask you something. When we crashed here a couple of years ago you went crazy. Remember that night when we were sitting by the campfire and you were looking at that impossible woman with the slumped shoulders and messed up hair? You said, ‘That’s my woman’? Remember that?”

  Mike says, “Yes, I remember.”

  “So whatever happened to her?” Bill continues. “I thought you’d lost your mind. You wouldn’t come home with me. You stayed here because of that witch. Now you’ve got this great place in paradise and you are living with this wonderful sexy island queen. I am glad you sobered up. But what actually happened to that first lady?”

  Mike points toward the kitchen and says, “I married her. She opened the door for you. She cooked this meal for us. That’s her.”

  “No way!” says Bill. “That’s not her. That other woman was dressed in rags. Her spirit was ruined. She was skinny and pissed off at everybody. This is not her! Your woman is a goddess. She’s gorgeous. She’s radiant. She’s full of love and confidence. Her eyes sparkle! This is not that other woman. You’re lying to me!”

  Mike says, “No. I’m not lying. This is my Nine Cow Woman.”

  Bill says, “I don’t believe you.”

  Then Mike calls to his woman. “Excuse me Mary,” he says. “Could you please come here and explain to my friend who you are?”

  So she comes over and sits down at the table. She smiles at Bill with simple joy and says, “Yes, this is really me.” And as she smiles Bill can see th
e gap between her teeth and he recognizes that it is her. He is stunned.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says, shaking his head. “What happened to you? I saw how you were back then. You were this skinny, angry, messed-up woman. What happened?”

  She points to Mike, smiles again and says, “It was this man here. He did it.”

  “What do you mean?” Bill asks.

  “Well,” Mary says gently, “Ever since I was a little girl I knew that I was really only a Two Cow Woman. Everyone in the village, including my friends and family, also saw me and related to me as a Two Cow Woman. Then along comes Mike saying that I am worth nine cows! At first I resist. But then he actually pays the nine cows – nine cows! For me! And when we get married he organizes a Nine Cow Wedding ceremony. I wear a Nine Cow wedding dress! Me! And then he builds me this true Nine Cow Woman house. I see him sweating, sawing the wood, carrying boards, thatching the roof. I see that he totally trusts what he is doing for me. There is no doubt in him about who I am. Every evening, I mean every evening he would do the Nine Cow Rub-Her-Feet-and-Shoulders Ceremony. And every Saturday morning he would spoil me with the Nine Cow Tea-and-Breakfast-in-Bed Ceremony. At first I could not handle it. I was not very pleasant to be around. But I could not do anything to change his mind. Even now he refuses to get off it. He talks with me only like you would speak to a Nine Cow Woman. In every way he treats me like a Nine Cow Woman. He even introduces me to people as a Nine Cow Woman. At some point I could no longer disagree. I surrendered. My old opinion of myself fell away. I had no choice. I started experiencing myself through his eyes. I became a Nine Cow Woman.”

  For a few moments there is total silence. You could hear waves gently lapping against the white coral sand beach. Then Bill looks over at Mike and asks, “You did this to make her happy?”